Riverside City Council members were explicit in their warning when they voted in February to extend then-City Manager John Russo’s contract: If we don’t show strong support, staff members will see us as unsupportive and unstable.

Top staff, serving below their pay grade out of loyalty to Russo and the city’s mission, will flee. And, they said, it will be hard to recruit for positions that make the city run well.

With those dangers in mind — along with the fear of bad publicity over a dispute about the wisdom of the contract and the legality of the veto Mayor Rusty Bailey was threatening to stop it — council members voted 5-2 to extend Russo’s contract until December 2024.

Then the dispute went about as public as it could, with a continuing court battle between Bailey and the city grabbing headlines across Southern California.

Riverside City Manager John A. Russo was fired Tuesday, April 17.

Then that same council, without saying what had changed, voted 4-3 Tuesday, April 17, to fire Russo.

Some, including Councilman Andy Melendrez, say the signal sent by firing a top official they nearly all agreed was going a great job just 10 weeks earlier only makes things worse.

“It really speaks to the fickleness of the council,” said Melendrez, who voted in support of Russo both times. “I think when you have a city that’s moving very strongly forward and you lose a city manager, I think it sends up real questions to those that are looking.”

Those who voted to fire Russo say the fears of instability are overblown.

“We’ve got a team here,” said Councilman Chuck Conder, who voted against extending the contract and for firing Russo. “We will continue on and do great things. This is like football teams – you change quarterbacks, the team can still go to the Super Bowl.”

Part of a pattern?

Russo became city manager three years ago, in May 2015. His predecessor, Scott Barber, served about the same tenure: 2011 to December 2014. Before that, Brad Hudson served six years, and George Caravalho served two-and-a-half after his appointment in 2002. Of the four, Russo and Caravalho were fired.

Those tenures aren’t unusually short. Half of city managers serve less than five years in a city, while half serve more, according to one 2014 study, and the California City Managers Foundation cites similar numbers statewide.

But the way Riverside’s top executives left raises red flags, said Ron Loveridge, who served as the city’s mayor from 1994 to 2012 and teaches political science at UC Riverside. Three out of the four were forced out in one way or another, he said.

Scott Barber was Riverside’s city manager before John Russo.

“That is not a good number,” Loveridge said. “Now you see the headlines of ‘chaos at City Hall,’ what happened to John (Russo), getting high marks, then suddenly fired. In terms of what a city wants to do, what it wants to present to the world, these are not helpful descriptions.”

The city may soon lose others at the top.

Russo brought in several widely praised administrators, including two assistant city managers, and he told the council their support of him was important to keeping their loyalty.

“Let’s not kid ourselves,” Russo said as the council debated his contract. “If we don’t extend my contract, this team will start to break up.”

Conder, despite his confidence that the city’s overall trajectory will stay strong, said Russo might have been right about that.

“It’s going to be up to them,” Conder said. “I’m sure they’ll make a decision based on what’s best for them.”

The City Council on Friday, April 20, appointed an interim city manager, Lee McDougal, who said he had confidence in the council’s support and stability. That’s based largely on the time he served as interim city manager from December 2014 until May 2015.

“I thought we had a great working relationship,” McDougal said this week. “And we had open lines of communication. We were frank with one another. We all have the same goals, we wanted what’s best for the city. I believe that still continues.”

Riverside won’t immediately need to worry about its reputation with potential city managers from outside the city. That’s because the City Council chose Friday to focus its recruitment on candidates who already work for City Hall.

Councilman Jim Perry, who is leading the recruitment process for a new long-term city manager to follow McDougal, said he believed in those administrators and wants to help them toward career goals in the city.

Detective Aurelio Melendrez, vice president of the Riverside Police Officers’ Association, said the council’s reversal on whether Russo should be city manager will likely hurt recruitment.

“I don’t think it will affect the way we recruit as the police department, because it’s continuous hiring, but for the next city manager, they won’t know what the council wants from one minute to the next,” said Melendrez, the son of Councilman Melendrez. “I would say, disheartening more than anything else. It kind of seems we’re on an unsteady boat right now.”

‘Legacy was unfinished’

Russo was midway through several big projects, including moving the Main Library and creating the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art, Culture and Industry.

That project now has $2.85 million of the $3 million it must raise by May 29, said Ofelia Valdez-Yeager, who’s in charge of that effort.

She’s thankful to Russo for his part, but is sure the center will come without him.

“John’s vision certainly as the city manager of this large city really championed it, together with the city council and the mayor — they were in agreement this,” she said. ” So my understanding is we’re still moving forward.”

Tom Hunt, a Riverside Unified School District board member, said Russo’s accomplishments mix with “discord” he created by not getting buy-in from other officials before pushing for projects.

“I think John did a lot of good things, but his method, in the end, was not the character of shared governance,” Hunt said.

Hunt credited Russo with convincing residents to vote for Measure Z, which provided for public safety needs, and with revamping public utilities.

“But what happens with the Cheech and the library?” Hunt asked. “I think a lot of the legacy was unfinished.”

It’s hard to finish a legacy in less than seven to 10 years, Loveridge said. Only a few cities are able to get the smooth transitions from manager to manager that a city needs to thrive, he said, pointing to Ontario as an example.

“The most difficult problem facing every city manager, and also the most important one, is shared governance,” Loveridge said. “Without an agenda, the city just twirls in circles.”

Editor’s note: This article has been updated to clarify that Measure Z tax money is for public safety needs.

Ryan Hagen covers the city of Riverside for the Southern California Newspaper Group. Since he began covering Inland Empire governments in 2010, he's written about a city entering bankruptcy and exiting bankruptcy; politicians being elected, recalled and arrested; crime; a terrorist attack; fires; ICE; fights to end homelessness; fights over the location of speed bumps; and people's best and worst moments. His greatest accomplishment is breaking a coffee addiction. His greatest regret is any moment without coffee.